AP Lang — ten ways to read a paragraph

Rhetorical analysis is a test of whether you can describe what a piece of writing is doing to you, separately from whether you agree with it. These ten questions each print a short invented passage and ask one question about how it works.

They cover ten different moves, one apiece, because the skill is not one skill. What the paragraph is trying to do to the reader. Who it is plainly written for, which you infer from what it explains and what it takes for granted. What one particular sentence is doing in the paragraph. What a concession buys the writer who makes it. What kind of support is being offered — analogy rather than statistic, and what that choice costs. Where a tone turns, and on which word. What one word implies that its neutral synonym would not. What a sentence's construction achieves that the same content in a different shape would not. Which appeal is doing the work. And, hardest, what the argument needs the reader to accept while never saying it.

That last question is worth the time it takes. Its paragraph reports only behaviour — people shopping, buying, and reading about the next model a fortnight later — and every word of it is compatible with two opposite readings. The writer assumes one of them. Finding the assumption means asking what someone who disagreed could say while accepting every fact on the page.

Each explanation points at the specific words that settle the question rather than asserting the answer, and names the misreading behind each wrong option. Several turn on a single connective, which is usually where these questions are decided.

Every passage here is invented. Nothing imitates a real writer closely, and no published text is quoted.

Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with the College Board, which owns the AP examinations, and it is not an exam centre.

• State a paragraph's purpose in terms of what it does to a reader, not what it reports
• Infer an intended audience from what a writer explains and what a writer assumes
• Name the job a single sentence performs in its paragraph, using its connective as the first evidence
• Explain what a concession buys the writer who makes it
• Identify the kind of evidence in play — anecdote, statistic, authority, analogy — and what each choice gains and costs
• Locate a tone shift at the word where it turns, and say what a word choice implies that a neutral synonym would not
• Describe what a sentence's construction achieves, and which appeal a passage principally relies on
• Find the premise an argument requires and never states

In a critique of modern consumerism, the writer observes: 'We give up our weekends to the shops, looking for the newest device and telling ourselves that this one will finally settle something. We take it home. Within a fortnight we are reading about its successor.' What does this argument require the reader to accept without ever saying so?